Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

ROLLING STONE TO CAUSE ROLLING HEADS?

By Marilyn M. Barnewall
April 17, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

There was good news Wednesday about a state reclaiming a bit of its independence and doing its part to keep unqualified political candidates off of ballots. Arizona’s Senate passed a Bill requiring political candidates to prove they meet lawful requirements to run for the office sought. The Bill has been sent on to the House for a vote. It’s out of Committee and is a work in progress. There is no doubt that The Donald raising this issue brought it to the attention of state legislators – hopefully in more places than Arizona.

It has also been a week of disconcerting news. In fact, if you’re depressed, you might not want to continue reading. There’s no way to sugar coat depressing news – but it contains information people need to know.

There is word on the street that Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, has approved plans for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to absorb the Federal Reserve System with an eye to the IMF becoming a global central bank. A “basket of currencies” (which includes the Chinese renmenbi/yuan) is to be created to replace the dollar as the international currency of trade. Plans are for “the basket” to become America’s new currency.

Is it true? There’s no way to confirm the rumor. The same spark that lit the fire under the rumor also suggests it will not be long in coming. If true, I believe it is an act that borderlines Treason. I’m no lawyer, but it seems to this citizen of the United States that my Constitution (which defines government’s limitations) says the only authority for currency and coinage in this country is the United States Congress. I have a sovereign right to an American currency as determined by the United States Congress, and some jerk-o Treasury Secretary who can’t remember to pay his taxes doesn’t have the standing to rewrite the Constitution at will.

The Congress broke the constitutional bond regarding its responsibility for our currency and monetary policy when it created the Federal Reserve System and handed over to a private corporation what the Constitution says only the Congress has the right to do. I wonder if Congress set a precedent in 1913 when it approved the Federal Reserve Act. By rejecting its responsibility to manage currency, coinage and monetary policy, did Congress pave the road for individual states to reject their constitutional obligation to rely on the federal government for currency, coinage and monetary policy? Can states create their own currency? One could certainly make a good argument for – or, against – it. If one person to a contract violates the agreement, can the other party be bound by it? It’s a good question.

Too, news of the Fed’s extreme abuse of Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) funds also came out this week. TALF was passed by the Democrat Congress and it became effective in April 2009. This misfit of taxpayer abuse totally belongs to the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Obama Administration.

According to Matt Taibbi in a three-article series in Rolling Stone, scheduled to appear in the April 28, 2011 issue, staffers in the U.S. Senate and House are “pouring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies…”

Fed Chairman Bernanke, et al, sent billions in TALF funds to banks from Mexico to Bahrain to Bavaria (and Libyan banks borrowed 70 times) while our own banks were suffering liquidity shortages. Billions more were sent to Japanese car companies that compete with Made in American auto manufacturers. Citigroup and Morgan Stanley got more than $2 trillion each. The most shocking thing is that billions more were made available to millionaires and billionaires with offshore addresses – the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, etc. – places where wealthy Americans seek to shelter financial secrets.

A company named Waterfall TALF Opportunity got $220 million – a small amount by comparison to the billions and trillions made available to foreign car companies and banks in nations where our military fights battles with foreign governments. As for Wall Street brokerage houses… the tales Taibbi tells made me ill.

In the case of Waterfalls TALF Opportunity, its primary investors are Christy Mack (wife of John J. Mack, Chairman, Morgan Stanley) and Susan Karches (widow of Peter Karches, former President, Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division). As I said, Waterfalls got $220 million from Dr. Ben and his Mad, Mad, Money Machine called the Federal Reserve System – the pretender of a “central bank” that is supposed to be run on behalf of America’s monetary interests.

According to Taibbi, “Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars via a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk free income.”

Taibbi points to Susan Karches’ economic experience in finance as dabbling in thoroughbred racehorses. Yet, she and her friend, Christy Mack, started their company with an investment of $15 million – which, it appears, immediately qualified them to receive $220 million from the Federal Reserve. They used the Fed’s money – your money and my money – to buy student loans and commercial mortgages. Taibbi says “The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses.” Does that sound like a simple transaction someone who “dabbled in thoroughbred racehorses” could put together without very informed help from an insider?

To really understand the total lack of respect for the American people by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Dr. Ben Bernanke, and Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, you need to read Taibbi’s article. It exemplifies disrespect for how hard most Americans work for their money and the burden irresponsible taxation places upon them. It also exemplifies literal contempt. This behavior is a mere echo of their laughter at Americans who are dumb enough to trust them. They see the people’s lack of understanding of the system of banking and finance as an opportunity to commit fraud.

I wrote an article two weeks ago about the need to ask the right questions to ensure against being “disinformationalized.” Several questions come to mind. First, isn’t it interesting that the second story so perfectly sets the stage for the first? It almost makes you want to say “Yes! Let the IMF take over the Fed! They deserve their fate and the fires of Hell are waiting! Throw the Fed into the fire!”

It’s hard to argue against that statement – but we must consider the results of having the IMF absorb the Federal Reserve System as part of a Global Central Bank and loss of the United States Dollar as the international currency of trade (which would put this economy over the edge and America, as a nation, into third world status from which it may never re-emerge). Having the IMF absorb the Federal Reserve System isn’t the only solution – and it is a far cry from being the best one!

For years I have told readers that George Herbert Walker Bush’s New World Order would be achieved by establishing a world economic system that can be easily morphed into world government. The IMF absorbing the Federal Reserve System is just one step along that path. Long ago, in News With Views, I wrote about the games the big boys play – and this is one of those games… only it isn’t a game. It’s deadly serious!

I believe there was a long-term socialist plan to Obama’s ascension to the Presidency; a plan to kidnap the government of the United States of America. I believe it began when Barack Hussein Obama/Soetoro went on a trip with his Pakistani college roommate using what was probably not an American Passport. He visited his mother in Indonesia, and met her boss, Peter F. Geithner… the father of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner. Geithner senior was President of the Ford Foundation Asia and oversaw the work of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, who developed what are called microfinance programs in Indonesia. I have copies of speeches given by Ann Dunham for the Ford Foundation during the year Obama visited her. Until his return from this trip, Obama was a not-too-good-student in a small California college. After this trip, the record says he moved to Columbia University (no students there at the time remember him) and then went to Harvard (where he headed The Law Review – but never really wrote anything). What happened during that trip to make such a huge change in the life of a man named Barack Hussein Obama/Soetoro?

The first story – the rumor that the Fed will be absorbed by the IMF and we Americans will have a new, international currency thrust upon us without constitutional authority – is somewhat ameliorated and softened by the second story – finding out just how corrupt the Federal Reserve System and our Treasury Department have become – and how apparent it is that neither Bernanke or Geithner give a tinker’s damn about the people of this country. We need to pay attention and ensure the IMF stays international and away from America’s financial roots. This TALF audit of the Federal Reserve that enlightens how America as a nation got $14 trillion in debt justifies a full and comprehensive investigation with “full disclosure” of the results – with handcuffs to follow.

There is ample evidence of the abuses… that’s been a matter of record since Professor William Black, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, April 10, 2010. If you want to read the expert witness testimony of Professor Black (who headed the investigative efforts of the savings and loan scandal and knows how to recognize a crime when he sees one), here’s a link to what he told Barney Frank’s Committee in 2010. Black has long questioned the lack of arrests in the list of fraudulent Wall Street events of 2007 that caused the near failure of the strongest economy in the world.

If President Obama had the slightest desire to save the American populace from the trials and tribulations that are coming, he would pay Ambassador Lee/Leo Emil Wanta the $4.5 trillion that was lawfully wire transferred to his accounts at Bank of America by the People’s Bank of China in May of 2006. The money disappeared down a Federal Reserve dark hole and the Ambassador has been fighting to gain access to it ever since. According to Judge Gerald Bruce Lee in a Richmond Federal District Court Decision, the money is Wanta’s. The Ambassador wants to use $1 trillion of his personal funds to build a national high-speed rail system. It would create two million new jobs with full benefits, put a floor under the ever-increasing rate of unemployment that, in turn, would put a floor under the fallen and still falling real estate market – and that, dear reader, would put the economy on the road to recovery.

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. She has written seven non-fiction books about banking and taught private banking at Colorado University for the American Bankers Association. She has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction (about banking, of course). She has served on numerous Boards in her community.

Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officers Magazine and as a journalist has written guest editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, among others. On the Internet, she has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in Finance and Business, and Who's Who in the World.
Web site: http://marilynwrites.blogspot.com
E-Mail: marilynmacg@juno.com

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).